Another open letter to the chair of the Board of Governors

Dear Ms Hyde:

Today is December 1^st and the strike continues beyond the date any of us expected, let alone hoped. I want to begin this by thanking you for your personal response to my previous letter. In this time of seemingly increasing distance it was nice to feel some kind of personal connection to a stranger.

But as I say, the strike continues. Throughout negotiations, UMFA has put forward proposal after proposal, and has been met with at best minimal movement from the administration's bargaining team. Members involved and who have reported their impressions of bargaining and mediation, have indicated that much of the rest of the administration's side don’t seem to be as active participants in the process, and that the head bargainer, Ken Maclean, seems to be perhaps the only consequential voice on the admin side.  Mr Maclean is of course a specialist in labor and employment law, but as an outside litigator how familiar is he with the day-to-day activities of a university?

Employers and educators are finally beginning to realize that a focus on STEM education and outcomes, which seem to be at the forefront of ‘market-driven’ and ‘employer-focused’ educational philosophies, are inadequate in the long term. Many writers opine that the true value of STEM education is the focus on creative problem solving and critical thinking, not the factory-output of competent engineers and technicians. Lately, I have been seeing reference to STEAM educational values—science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics—recognizing that traditional university disciplines, rather than being valueless to the marketplace, haave always produced the critical thinkers and problem solvers that employers need now and into the future.  Acquaintances in industry have often said that ‘they can teach them to run the machines and work the numbers. What we can’t do is teach them to read and write’ in illustration of exactly this point. They do not know what skills will be most in demand in five-to-ten years, let alone further along, any more than they (or we) know where the next medical breakthrough or entrepreneurial success will come from. But it will definitely come from someone well practiced in critical thinking, not just numbers and existing solutions.

I speak for no one but myself, but it seems to me that ‘negotiation’ is by definition give-and-take. No one is necessarily 100% pleased with the outcome, but the result should be some kind of ‘acceptable’ middle-ground. It seems that Mr Maclean has shouldered the burden of some arbitrary (or provincially sponsored) line in the sand, and dug in his heels to protect it,, perhaps ignoring even the wisdom of the rest of his team in doing so. He and the bargaining team have not demonstrated fair and good-faith bargaining, as reflected in compromise. If there is any truth in this, regardless of the source of the limitations on the bargaining team’s activity, they do the university community a grave disservice and endanger the long-term health of the university.

This, in my long-winded way, is my way of asking that, as a matter of inexpressible urgency, the Board provide new direction to Mr Maclean and the bargaining team, to look forward to the long-term health of the university, the robustness of the university community and our ability to recruit and retain energetic and imaginative faculty, and our ability to deliver on long-term needs of ‘the market’.

Respectfully
robh 

Robert Hagiwara
Department of Linguistics
Currently on legal strike